


expensive holes to bury things

by Trojie



Series: Inception Bingo 2016 [5]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Dildos, Forgery, It's For a Case, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:11:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7578952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extractors worry about their emotional baggage bringing along projections. For forgers, it's physical presence. It's hard to shake off the phantom sensations of your own body. And if you're hungry, or sore, or, well, gagging for it, it gets distracting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	expensive holes to bury things

**Author's Note:**

> For Inception Bingo, prompt "dildos"
> 
> I and this fic were both saved from panic and crying and my two minutes to midnight mad decision to delete a full third of the text by immoral_crow, to whom I probably owe my firstborn, my soul, or three wishes.
> 
> The title is from If I Had A Tail by Queens of the Stone Age.

When you spend your life on the move, you learn to cherish few things as much as batteries. If you have enough batteries, the urge to go out and be stupid with strangers (or colleagues), can be kept at bay. However, when you're working a job out of a very small villa in the idyllic south of France with very thin walls, battery-powered things become indiscreet. 

Half of dreamshare is knowing what you need to get the job done. In some ways, at least, Eames is good at having all his angles covered. Non-battery-powered options are less efficient, but do have the benefit of being silent, and much more secretive provided you can keep your mouth shut. Eames is a master of keeping his mouth shut. 

Arthur, apparently, is not. 

'You're ambitious,' he says, leaning down to say it in Eames's ear.

Eames had asked him to retrieve a file from the desk in his room. Nothing he hadn't done before. Except. 

'You left it on the bed,' Arthur murmurs. 'It was hard to miss.'

Eames swallows hard and stares straight ahead. 'Did you get that file for me?' he asks in a normal, conversational tone.

'Of course,' says Arthur, handing it over. 'Did you need help with anything else?'

Eames suppresses the shudder that that little question sends through him, because Arthur can't possibly mean it how it sounds, and shakes his head. Arthur leaves him to his work after that, but the warmth of his body lingers against Eames's shoulders for a long moment. 

Eames's vivid imagination has always been an asset to his work. Right now, though, it just makes it hard to concentrate. 

***

Eames is not, in actual fact, some kind of sex fiend. The reality is much more prosaic than that. It's just that he needs to be entirely on top form to forge, and that means having no niggling desires of his own that might override the characterisation of his forgeries. 

Extractors worry about their emotional baggage bringing along projections. For forgers, it's physical presence. It's hard to shake off the phantom sensations of your own body. And if you're hungry, or sore, or, well, gagging for it, it gets distracting. 

So yes, he has a small selection of reliable sex toys in his luggage. He doesn't use them all the time, or on every job. 

It's just that when Arthur's around, he needs them more.

***

They get through the rest of the day with very little incident, but it's clearly too much to ask that it stay that way.

There's a knock on Eames's door just after midnight, which is roughly his bedtime at the moment thanks to the almost-permanent jetlag he suffers from. Given most people in the less-legal end of dreamshare are similarly afflicted, he's not sure which of the team is more likely to be looking for him at this time of night, but given how close they are to D-day, he figures it's probably Elena. She doesn't sleep at all, at the sharp end of a job.

He looks around the room to make sure he actually has hidden away anything incriminating before he says, 'Come in?'

But it's Arthur, not Elena, that slips through the door, and Eames regrets really quite strongly not _putting his bloody shirt back on_ before inviting him in. 

'Arthur,' he says measuredly, as if it's completely normal and usual for him to receive colleagues half-dressed. 'What can I do for you?'

Arthur closes the door behind him. 'Actually, I kind of wanted to offer to do something for you,' he says. 'If you want.'

'I think I've drunk enough coffee, but ta very much.'

'Eames. Don't play games.'

Eames rolls his eyes. 'Ninety percent of what I do is play games.'

'We're two days out from a job,' Arthur says, rubbing a hand on his neck in a way that might almost be considered bashful, in a man less poised. Eames notices that Arthur, for once, isn't wearing a tie or a waistcoat - his shirt seems diaphanously thin without those extra fripperies, and his top three buttons are undone. For Arthur, the ensemble is practically racy. 'It's my responsibility to make sure you're in a position to perform at your best.'

'Am I giving you some reason to doubt my … ability to perform?'

'No,' says Arthur, in the tone that usually heralds some transcendental tweak to an existing, perfectly serviceable but frankly tedious, plan. 'But I think I can see a way to up your game.'

He reaches out and runs his fingers along Eames's collarbone, shockingly boldly. 'I think you want my help,' he says. 'I know you don't need it, but I think you want it.'

Eames swallows. It's times like these that the Oscar Wilde line about temptation really hits home. 'Oh, really?'

'Here's what I know,' says Arthur. He takes his hands off Eames and puts them in his pockets, a move that strategically ruins the lines of his beautifully tailored trousers and puts certain anatomical thoughts very prominently into Eames's head. 'In two days time, you have to forge the best buddy of a man with an alpha-male complex so intense he's gone through three wives, paid out seven sexual harassment suits, and disowned his oldest son for being bisexual. You're gonna have to be his friend. You're gonna have to act like you like him, like you agree with him. Just knowing what I do about you,' and he says that in such a way as to imply he knows a lot, 'I'd think that'd be something that left a bad taste in your mouth.'

Eames's mouth, at this moment in time, is dry. He shrugs rather than trying to say anything. It's not as if Arthur is _wrong_. 

'But I also know a few things about forgery,' Arthur continues. 'I can't do it, but I know the theory. It's harder if you're distracted, right?'

'Right,' Eames says, hoarsely. 

Arthur looks up at him properly, fixes him with that bloody-minded basilisk stare of his, and says, 'Eames, if you want to be fucked, I can help.'

He doesn't say it like it's a line, is the thing. He says it like he's thought through all of the logistics and has decided this is the best strategy. And that makes Eames go just that bit weak at the knees. 

Yes, they want each other. They have for a while now. And yes, right now, Eames has a physical itch he'd like scratched. But nothing says they need to combine those two things, and Eames has always been of the opinion that dipping one's pen in the company ink, particularly in a 'company' as sprawling and full of backstabbing as dreamshare, is a bad idea.

Eames has been subject to and subjected others to hundreds of pickup lines, in his life. He knows them for what they almost always are. If Arthur had tried some variation on 'get your coat, love, you've pulled', Eames would have said no in a heartbeat. 

But tactics, specifically Arthur's tactics, Eames can trust. 

***

He can also, it turns out, trust Arthur's freakish competence at all physical pursuits. 

'You need to be quiet,' Arthur leans down and murmurs into his ear. It's possible that Eames has been sweating the sheets translucent and moaning some variation on 'Holy Mary, Mother of God' into the pillow for the last few minutes, but frankly the exact details are hazy. 'Elena and Nicki are trying to sleep.'

But Eames has an orange dildo up his arse and Arthur's angling it in ways you just can't achieve on your own, unless you no longer value your wrists, and Eames's skill at keeping his mouth shut is rather failing him, right at this second. He doesn't have a lot of incentive, in fairness, not with how every time he makes a sound, Arthur's fingers seem to twitch and move the dildo in unspeakable ways. 

'I'll gag you,' Arthur threatens. Or promises. His tone is hard to read. 'Would you like that?'

Eames bites the pillow and whimpers. 

'Got a theory here, Eames,' Arthur says. Why is it so unspeakably attractive that his accent is veering away from the careful, clipped enunciation he usually affects? 'I figure, you don't always like the people you forge.'

It's true. 

'I figure, this job has rubbed you the wrong way from day one. You don't like MacNamara's politics, you don't like how he treats people, and what he did to his _son_ -'

Arthur has a talent for one shot, one kill, but he's veering dangerously close to actually personal here. Eames bucks up under him, his bare thighs contacting with the fine smooth wool of Arthur's suit trousers and shocking yet another noise out of him. Arthur's quick, though - he jams his free hand down on the small of Eames's back to prevent further movement. 

'- you wanna take a piece out of him,' says Arthur. 'You wanna do this job, even if it means living in the skin of someone you despise, because you think MacNamara deserves to be fucked over. Am I right?'

He's right. Eames doesn't even need to say it. 

'So I got a thought for you.' Arthur's voice is a growl now, hot and rough, and his fingers around the base of the dildo are a mess of slippery lube, smearing up and down Eames's inner thighs and losing finesse along with grip. He's shoving the thing in now and hauling it out, and Eames shudders and struggles, wanting it _in_ but adoring how it feels on the outstroke, the way Arthur waits just a fraction of a second before pushing it back. 'I think, you're doing this now so you won't be distracted when you forge. But you're better than that, Eames. I've seen you forge in firefights. One washed up second-tier corporate fatcat? You could be that asshole in your sleep.'

'What,' Eames pants, spitting out the pillowcase, 'did you have in mind?'

'I'm saying I wanna fuck you with your toy tonight, and tomorrow, and the morning of the job,' says Arthur, and the tips of his fingers are flirting with Eames's hole as he pushes the dildo in, harder and harder. 'So when you're being the buttoned-up asshole who did all that paperwork, swept all those lawsuits under the rug, the one so deep in the closet he's never coming out, you can remember how good it feels. And then I want you to show MacNamara what Davis really wants from him.'

Eames hadn't realised Arthur had read _those_ notes. It hadn't been hard to figure out from observation, and he'd wondered if he could use it, but there are some buttons it's not always wise to push in the dreamstate. MacNamara's actions towards his son made him think, this time, letting sleeping dogs lie is the best course. The man doesn't need to know what goes through his closest collaborator's head sometimes, during late evenings at the office.

But God, it _would_ screw him up, wouldn't it? Eames thinks about MacNamara's response, if he tried. If he-as-Davis stood too close, if he said things only just this side of plausibly deniable, if he made a move …

Arthur rolls the dildo in his fingers and it slides hard against Eames's prostate. He groans. Fuck, yes. _Yes_.

'I want to mess with his head,' says Arthur viciously. 'I want him to want something he's never gonna let himself have. I want him to crave something he'd be ashamed of. And you can do that. No-one turns you down, not when you're working. You can make him want you. You can make him want it so hard he hates himself for it.'

He slides his hand up from Eames's back to tangle it in his hair, wrench his head back, and kiss him. 'Because this is fucking amazing, and you're better than him,' he says into Eames's mouth. 'Because you're better than all of those snooty, nose in the air fuckers who tell us we're wrong for wanting what we want.' 

Eames comes hard, but he comes silently, shaking like an earthquake into the mattress. When Arthur eases the dildo out of him he barely moves except to shiver. Arthur pads off to the bathroom with the toy, and a second later Eames hears the tap running. When Arthur comes back, Eames realises he's still dressed, and still hard.

'Come here,' he says softly. 'I'll take care of that for you.'

Arthur puts the now-clean dildo into Eames's suitcase, and turns around. 'After the job,' he says. Off Eames's raised eyebrow, he adds, 'You need to take the edge off, to do what you do. I need kinda the opposite.'

Eames blinks. His cock twitches. 'Darling -'

'I'm serious, by the way. I need him unsettled, for the second layer,' says Arthur. He stops by the edge of the bed and presses his fingertips to Eames's lips. 'Work it, Eames. Trust me, that's the angle that'll get us what we need.'


End file.
